Brian Martin

Gene Sharp, the world's
leading writer on non-violent action, uses a theory of power based
on a division between rulers and subjects and on the withdrawing
of consent as the main avenue for effecting political change. From
the point of view of structural approaches to the analysis of
society, Sharp's picture leaves out much of the complexity of
political life, such as the structures of capitalism, patriarchy
and bureaucracy which do not fit well with the ruler-subject
picture. As a set of conceptual tool for social activists,
however, Sharp's theory of power is far superior to structural
approaches.

* The theory of power discussed in
this Review Essay underlies most of Gene Sharp's writings (1970,
1973, 1979, 1980, 1985). The most important explicit statements for
studying it are Sharp (1973. pp. 7-62 and 1980, pp. 21-67, 309-378) .
I thank Ariel Salleh and Val Plumwood for valuable discussions and
Ann Aungles, Stewart Russell and two anonymous referees for useful
comments on an earlier draft.

1.
Introduction

Gene Sharp is the foremost writer
in the world today on the subject of non-violent action. His book
The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973) is widely regarded as
a classic. Other important works are two collections of essays,
Social Power and Political Freedom (1980) and Gandhi as a
Political Strategist (1979), and the more recent Making Europe
Unconquerable (1985). More works are forthcoming.

Other writers and activists have
made important contributions to the theory and practice of
non-violent action, especially Gandhi [1].
Sharp's key role has been to systematize the field in two ways.
First, he has classified methods of non-violent action and catalogued
hundreds of different techniques along with an extensive array of
historical examples. This classification has produced conceptual
order amongst the cluttered and scattered experiences of and
literature on non-violent actions. Second, Sharp has elaborated a
theory of power which offers a framework for understanding how
non-violent action works.

Sharp's ideas are especially
worthy of critical attention because they have been widely adopted by
social activists as providing a theoretical underpinning for their
own nonviolent actions. Training sessions on nonviolence often
include segments on 'power theory', which typically is a simplified
version of Sharp's ideas, based either directly on his writings or on
secondary accounts of them. Yet compared to the intensive use of his
ideas by activists, scholars have devoted little attention to
Sharp.

My aim in this paper is to analyse
Sharp's theory of power, especially by comparing it to structural
approaches to social analysis. It is not my concern here to confront
the standard objections to non-violent action, especially that it
doesn't or won't work, nor address the argument that the usual
reliance on violence by governments or liberation movements is
essential. Criticisms of Sharp from defenders of an ultimate reliance
on violence often misconceive his theory [2].

Sharp has written that he welcomes
critiques. My analysis is done in the spirit of sympathetic
criticism.

2. Sharp's
Approach

The essence of Sharp's theory of
power is quite simple: people in society may be divided into rulers
and subjects; the power of rulers derives from consent by the
subjects; non-violent action is a process of withdrawing consent and
thus is a way to challenge the key modern problems of dictatorship,
genocide, war and systems of oppression.

The two key concepts in Sharp's
theory of power are, first, the ruler-subject classification and,
second, consent. The ruler-subject classification is one that Sharp
uses without detailed justification. The 'ruler' includes 'not only
chief executives but also ruling groups and all bodies in command of
the State structure' (1980, p. 22). Sharp focuses on the state in his
analysis. He spells out the various structures involved in the state,
especially the state bureaucracy, police and military, all of which
'are under the command of the person or group which occupies the
position of "ruler" at the head of the State' (1980, p. 316). All
others besides the rulers are the subjects.

Sharp defines political power,
which is one type of social power, as 'the totality of means,
influences, and pressures - including authority, rewards, and
sanctions - available for use to achieve the objectives of the
power-holder, especially the institutions of government, the State,
and groups opposing either of them' (1980, p. 27). Sharp counterposes
his analysis to the common idea that power is a monolithic entity
residing in the person or position of a ruler or ruling body. Sharp
argues instead that power is pluralistic, residing with a variety of
groups and in a diversity of locations, which he calls 'loci of
power'. The loci of power provide a countervailing force against the
power of the ruler, especially when the loci are numerous and widely
distributed throughout society.

Accepting the argument that power
is not intrinsic to rulers, then it must come from somewhere else.
Sharp gives the following key sources of power: authority, human
resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material
resources and sanctions (1973, pp. 1112). What is the basis for these
sources of power? This is where the second key concept of Sharp's
enters in. He says that these sources of the ruler's power 'depend
intimately upon the obedience and cooperation of the subjects'
(1973, p. 12). This can be called the consent theory of power.
Without the consent of the subjects - either their active support or
their passive acquiescence the ruler would have little power and
little basis for rule.

Power for Sharp is always
contingent and precarious, requiring cultivation of cooperation and
manipulation of potentially antagonistic loci. His consideration of
the sources of power thus leads him to obedience as the key: 'the
most important single quality of any government, without which it
would not exist, must be the obedience and submission of its
subjects. Obedience is at the heart of political power' (1973, p.
16).

The focus on obedience then leads
Sharp to ask 'Why do men obey?' He suggests that there is no single
answer, but that important are habit, fear of sanctions, moral
obligation, self-interest, psychological identification with the
ruler, zones of indifference and absence of self-confidence among
subjects (1973, pp. 16-24).

Non-violent action constitutes a
refusal by subjects to obey. The power of the ruler will collapse if
consent is withdrawn in an active way. The 'active' here is vital.
The ruler will not be threatened by grumbling, alienation or critical
analyses alone. Passivity and submissiveness are of no concern to
Sharp; he is interested in activity, challenge and struggle (1973, p.
65), in particular with nonviolent methods of action.

The account here has abbreviated
and simplified Sharp's full exposition, but nevertheless highlights
key assumptions made by him. His theory of power is only the
beginning of his work on non-violent action, which leads him through
methods of nonviolent action to the 'dynamics of nonviolent action',
which includes laying the groundwork for action, making challenges,
building discipline, building support and redistributing power. The
theory of power is important because it is the theoretical foundation
for Sharp's other work.

3. Structural
Approaches

Sharp's approach can be examined
and challenged from many different angles. Here I contrast it with a
very general approach to social analysis which focuses on social
structures or institutions. Structures frequently selected out as
significant include capitalism, the state, patriarchy and
bureaucracy.

While social structures are
inevitably composed out of numerous social interactions, to focus on
the structure is to imply that certain types of social interaction
are so regular and entrenched that they take on a dynamic of their
own. The Marxist analysis of capitalism is probably the best example
of this (e.g. Althusser, 1977; Baran & Sweezy, 1968; Mandel,
1976; Marcuse, 1964; Poulantzas, 1978). Founded on private property,
the ownership of the means of production by a small minority of
people, and a market on which labour power is purchased and
exploited, capitalism appears to behave like a self-regulating
system. Whatever the intentions of individual capitalists, if they do
not extract surplus labour power from their workers and thus compete
successfully in the market, they will be driven to
bankruptcy.

Much Marxist scholarship has shown
that there is much more to capitalism than blind economic mechanism.
Vital to the establishment and maintenance of capitalist
relationships are struggles between owners and employees, gender and
ethnic divisions within the working class, economic intervention from
the state to stabilize and protect markets, social intervention from
the state to provide services (education, health and welfare) for
reproducing the labour power needed by capital, and police and
military intervention from the state to control labour
revolts.

The resulting complex of economic
and political relationships is still usually called capitalism, and
again treated as a system with its own dynamic. Thus we can read
about the current restructuring of capitalism, the penetration of
capitalism into second and third world societies and into more and
more facets of everyday life, and the ubiquitous 'crisis' of
capitalism.

Structural approaches hold great
power in analysing social systems, if the structures which are
conceptualized happen to capture key ways of organizing human
interactions which tend to reproduce themselves. This is an
elementary but important point. In principle, there is nothing to
stop the employees at a factory from simply leaving their jobs and
setting up production on their own in a different location. In
practice, if the 'different location' were someone else's private
property, police would be called in to evict the workers and there
would be little support from anyone else in the community.
Furthermore, the original company typically would find little
difficulty in recruiting new workers. Thus, the system of private
property and the market in labour would continue as before. As a
shorthand, it could be said that capitalist social relations
continued to assert themselves .

It took many decades before the
strike, a carefully circumscribed withdrawal of labour power, was
accepted as legitimate, and it continues to be attacked by employers.
Direct challenges to private property, such as squatting and workers'
control, are even more difficult to achieve.

The existence of numerous
struggles at the borders of what is conceived of as capitalism makes
it hard to argue that capitalism is an automatically self-sustaining
type of mechanism. Fundamentally involved is the commitment of
individuals to the current order. This is where the concept of
hegemony enters (Gramsci, 1971). Hegemony refers to the processes by
which a given way of organizing social life, in which one class
dominates another, becomes accepted as inevitable and desirable by
most people. These processes include the mass media, formal
education, the family, popular culture, and routines of daily life at
work and leisure.

Other concepts of social
structure, such as patriarchy and the state, have been elaborated
(and disputed) in a fashion similar to capitalism. The power of such
concepts is shown when analysing large-scale developments (the law of
uneven development of international capitalism; international
politics as struggles between states) and also when understanding
social struggles (such as conflicts and accommodation between
capitalism and patriarchy in labour history).

One of the major dangers in using
such concepts is the reification of categories. Capitalism, for
example, is frequently presented as if it operates and evolves
independently of the people whose interactions make it up.

The use of a structural analysis
does not commit one to a particular method of political action.
Historically, Marxist analysis has been linked to vanguard parties
whose aim is to capture state power in the name of the working class,
and for whom tools such as violence and the state are neutral. But
others using a Marxist analysis favour more populist methods,
involving themselves in mass struggles or working with the 'new
social movements' such as the environmental, feminist and peace
movements.

4. Limitations of Sharp's
Approach

Structural approaches provide a
useful contrast for examining Sharp's theory of power
[3].
Sharp's focus on consent is individualistic and voluntaristic in
orientation, as shown by his attention to psychological reasons for
obedience. An analysis of social structure provides another way to
understand consent (Moore, 1978).

An understanding of the power
relationships associated with capitalism would seem essential to
developing effective non-violent methods of struggle. While Sharp
gives numerous examples of non-violent action by workers - he devotes
an entire chapter of The Politics of Nonviolent Action to 23
types of strikes (l973, pp. 257-284) - he gives no examination of
capitalism as a system of power, and misses out on insights provided
by Marxist analysts.

While in principle an oppressive
ruler can be opposed by workers walking off the job, in practice
there are many factors to be taken into account in mobilizing them to
do so. The workers are likely to be divided along lines of status,
skill, wages, gender and ethnicity; the mass media may provide little
support or active disinformation; certain workers may have been tied
to the regime by dispensation of special favours. being involved in
corruption, or compromised by participating in repression of
minorities; education in nationalism may make it easy for the ruler
to raise the spectre of foreign enemies, external agitators and
hurting the national interest.

Furthermore, the 'system',
whatever its oppressiveness, may still serve to benefit large groups
of people in certain ways. Many members of the working class, while
exploited by capitalists, at the same time receive wages sufficient
to offer a life seen as better than those of their parents.
Capitalism as a social system simultaneously oppresses and benefits
those who live in it.

Sharp also gives no analysis of
the social system of bureaucracy and how its hierarchy, division of
labour and regular procedures serve to mesh everyone - including top
bureaucrats - into patterns of behaviour which are hard to escape.
Contrary to the usual picture, political struggles do take place
within and around bureaucracies (Weinstein, 1979), and since these
struggles are almost always non-violent, Sharp's approach may offer
some insights. But the ruler-subject dichotomy is of limited value
here, since in a typical bureaucracy, nearly everyone has both
superiors and subordinates. To be of use, the dynamics of non-violent
action would have to be elaborated in light of studies of the
dynamics of bureaucracy.

Patriarchy is another system of
power which Sharp has not analysed in detail. The social practices by
which males dominate over females can hardly be seen as ones simply
of ruler and subject. Complex processes are involved, including
upbringing, expectations of characteristic behaviour, the gender
division of labour, direct discrimination, harassment, rape and other
violence, all of which are linked to other systems of power,
including economic structures, the state, trade unions, churches and
the military. In particular, patriarchy is intertwined with the power
structures of the state and the military which are the focus of
Sharp's analysis. Non-violent action and the giving or withdrawing of
consent by women undoubtedly are important in the maintenance of male
domination. But without any analysis of patriarchy as a structured
set of social relations which can hardly be 'turned off' by the
simple withdrawal of consent, Sharp does not provide the basis for
studying this power dynamic.

Another key factor in systems of
power is technology. Rather than being neutral tools, technologies
can be said to embody social relations (Dickson, 1974). In other
words, particular artefacts are easier to use for some purposes and
by some social groups than others. For example, nuclear weapons can
serve the ends of state elites and perhaps some terrorists, but not
the ends of environmentalists or even the police. Small-scale solar
energy embodies values of self-reliance and decentralization, whereas
fossil fuels are more easily linked to dependence on centralized
suppliers.

The practical possibilities for
'withdrawing support' depend in part on the technological
infrastructure. If a community can feed and shelter itself without
massive outside assistance, it is better able to oppose aggressors
using non-violent methods. Technologies for person-to-person
communication, such as the telephone and short-wave radio, provide a
stronger basis for non-violent resistance than one-directional
technologies such as television. An analysis of the social relations
of technology, and the social struggles around technology, therefore
is vital to a full understanding of how present-day society is
maintained and how non-violent challenges to oppression can best
proceed. Sharp does not bring in such an analysis.

Another important factor is the
knowledge and experience of individuals and groups. People with a
tradition of independence and social struggle, and with practical
experience of opposing authority, are likely to be in a much better
situation to make use of non-violent action. Knowledge and experience
of this sort depend on a number of factors, including styles of
upbringing, formal education, the prevalence and mode of activity of
community groups, and the organization of work. Other power
structures enter in here, such as bureaucracy and patriarchy, since
they shape the understandings and experiences of those who 'live in
them'. Knowledge and experience are taken into account by Sharp in
his discussions of the psychology of obedience and loci of power, but
he provides no structural analysis of how people come to have the
knowledge and experience that they do. Knowledge is not something
that resides in books and experts but can be interpreted as a social
relationship, as a feature of processes of negotiation and the
exercise of power. Governments provide funds to research and develop
certain kinds of knowledge; the media select and construct knowledge
in certain ways schooling promotes and validates certain things as
knowledge. These and other factors affect the potential for
non-violent action, but Sharp's categories do not provide a
convenient entry point for examining them.

Sharp would quite correctly reply
that areas such as bureaucracy, patriarchy and technology are
perfectly compatible with his picture. In his listing of 'sources of
power', the category 'skills and knowledge' would cover the factor of
knowledge and experience noted above, while the category 'material
resources' would cover the factor of technology. With a bit of
stretching, the factors of bureaucracy and patriarchy might be
included in his category of 'human resources'. Sharp's picture can
be made to include things raised by structural approaches, but
only with some difficulty. The point is that Sharp's picture focuses
first and foremost on the ruler-subject dichotomy and on consent and
its withdrawal, whereas a detailed analysis of the structures of
power can only enter as an afterthought or as a general context for
the consent picture.

Like any moderately adaptable
political theory, Sharp's theory of power can be extended or adapted
to cover facets that initially seem to be left out. Indeed, a careful
reading of Sharp's work reveals an awareness of many of the points
raised here. Touching on issues in a general way, however, is quite
different from integrating them into the core concepts. The
adaptability of the theory does not remove its central focus, and it
is this focus which shapes how the theory is used and who is likely
to use it.

The consent picture works best, as
theory, when there is an obvious oppressor. It is not by chance that
Sharp regularly refers to Stalinism and Nazism. His examples of
challenges to authority largely concern situations which are widely
perceived as oppressive by contemporary Western political judgment.
In retrospect, and as a result of incessant reinforcement, most
people in the West today assume without question that opposition was
the only moral stance to be taken against Stalinism and Nazism. Sharp
challenges one aspect of this received wisdom in his emphasis on the
support for and lack of resistance to the Stalinist and Nazi
regimes.

Yet on another level Sharp does
not provide a sufficient challenge to the picture of ruler and
oppressed (if consenting) populace. To fully understand the
phenomenon of Stalinism, it is essential to analyse the mobilization
of support and suppression of dissent through the Communist Party,
the process of industrialization, the reconstitution of the
hierarchical army in the 1918-21 war against the Western attack on
the revolution, the social inheritance of Tsarism, and the
international political scene. Similar comments apply to Nazism. The
point is that Stalinism and Nazism were much more than simply systems
of ruler and oppressed, and that a full understanding of 'consent'
requires a deep social analysis (e.g. Gouldner, 1977-78).

This point is clearer in the
context of present-day struggles, where the judgment of history has
not yet become conventional wisdom in school history classes and
bipartisan political rhetoric. The meaning of nonviolent action is
the result of social struggle rather than following immediately from
a simple examination of rulers and subjects. Those such as the
Berrigans who have taken non-violent direct action against facilities
linked to the capacity for nuclear warfare can be interpreted as
acting for humanity against evil rulers who are willing to risk mass
killing to defend systems of power. But only a minority of people
accept this interpretation; in practice, the civil disobedients to
the nuclear war machine are engaged in political practice to convince
people that their concerns should be the concerns of others. These
activists have found that the dynamic of non-violent action does not
automatically click into place to generate greater support. Sharp
could only agree; he continually stresses that non-violent action is
not guaranteed to succeed. The trouble is that his theory of power
does not provide the conceptual tools needed to determine whether
direct action against nuclear facilities is a particularly effective
way to challenge the current systems of power and the current
ideologies which mobilize much of the population to support organized
violence as 'defence' against an 'enemy'.

Sharp comes closest to a
structural approach in his discussion of loci of power. For example,
he describes how the distributed power of the nobility under
feudalism constrained the monarch, who in principle had unlimited
authority (1980, pp. 33-35). But Sharp does not introduce any
concepts convenient for analysing these structures. The major purpose
of his examples is to argue for his thesis that constitutions are not
sufficient to control rulers, that replacing rulers does not lead to
control over rulers, and that devolution and diffusion of power among
many groups is necessary to control the ruler's power (1980, p. 47).
In short, his discussion of structures is used to support his basic
ruler-subject picture. Once established, the structures tend to be
dropped out of the picture. It is perhaps significant that when Sharp
does discuss structures of power it is usually using historical
examples such as feudalism or Fascism rather than examples also quite
relevant today such as capitalism or patriarchy.

Even Sharp's discussion of loci of
power gives a very simplified picture. Sharp argues that 'In order
for effective control over the ruler's power to be possible in the
long run, power must be effectively devolved and diffused among
various social groups and institutions throughout the society' (1980,
p. 47). This ignores the possible supportive relationships between
the loci ('various social groups') and dominant social groups, and
conflicts between the loci themselves. For example, trade unions
arose out of workers' struggles against oppressive working conditions
under capitalism, and were only set up in the face of vigorous
opposition by capitalists and governments. Therefore, trade unions
seem to be a perfect example of loci of power. Yet, once established,
many trade unions have been incorporated into the 'system' and act to
control the workers, for example in opposing grassroots worker
initiatives and wildcat strikes. The existence of hierarchy and
bureaucracy in trade union structures belies the image of a
straightforward process of devolution of power.

Trade unions, too, have been key
agencies for maintaining the gender division of labour, often in the
face of the acceptance or preference of employers for women at a
lower wage (Walby, 1986). Women's groups in their struggle against
discrimination in employment have gained some leverage from state
power, for example in the form of equal employment legislation. This
seems to be a process of one locus of power, the women's movement,
drawing on state power (the 'ruler') to challenge features of another
locus of power, namely patriarchal work practices supported by trade
unions. A similar analysis could be made of the dual role of other
organizations, such as political parties or environmental lobbies,
which act both to gain concessions and coopt radical ferment. The
message from such examples is that Sharp's idea of strengthening the
loci of power is not nearly as straightforward as it might seem,
while the complexities are hard to grasp using Sharp's conceptual
framework.

Sharp argues that the use of
non-violent action tends to diffuse power: 'Changes achieved by
nonviolent action are therefore likely to be more lasting' (1980, p.
62). Sharp's lack of structural analysis makes it difficult to say
anything more than this vague claim. The practical results of
non-violent action depend on the political context, and a detailed
analysis needs to be made to determine the role of nonviolent action
(e.g. Zielonka, 1986).

For example, the Iranian
Revolution in 1978-1979 was won largely through the mass use of
non-violent methods mobilized through the decentralized loci of the
bazaars. Furthermore, in the early stages of the revolution there
were some important social initiatives, for example towards equality
for women (Albert, 1980). Yet the revolution quickly turned into a
system of centralized repression. Factors involved in this
transformation include the availability of the state bureaucracy and
military forces from the Shah's regime, the hierarchical structure
and ideology of Shi-ite Islam, and the global political
configuration. The point here is that a simple analysis of the
'dynamics of nonviolent action' leaves out much of the social
complexity needed to understand the Iranian events. Structural
analysis has much to offer in understanding the process of revolution
(Skocpol, 1979, 1982).

5. Strengths of Sharp's
Approach

From the point of view of
structural approaches to social analysis, Sharp's theory of power is
much too simple to capture the full dynamics of society, if it is not
misconceived entirely. But this critique has been made using a tacit
assumption, associated with structural approaches, about what a
theory of power is supposed to achieve. To unearth this assumption,
it is useful to start with a basic question: what is the point of
having a theory of power in the first place?

The usual answer to this question
in social science would appeal to some unexamined notion of achieving
a better 'understanding' of social reality. But, to pursue the point,
what is the purpose of better understanding? Whose ends does this
understanding serve?

If the aim to advance the careers
of intellectuals who stand by the side observing society but
preferring to avoid interaction with it, then a complex, erudite
theory serves admirably. On the other hand, if the aim is to provide
some insights which can be used by activists, then a simple,
straightforward, easy-to-apply theory is far superior, so long as it
grasps certain basic insights. By this criterion, Sharp's theory is
highly successful.

Sharp explicitly states that he
aims to be readable (1980, p. xii). While his jargon-free
accessibility is important, however, far more so is the ease with
which his approach can be applied by activists. Sharp's picture is
essentially voluntarist: people, by deciding to withdraw consent, can
topple even the most repressive dictatorship. Sharp provides not only
a host of examples of non-violent action, but also describes a simple
dynamics which shows how seeming weakness - nonviolence - can lead to
increasing support.

Sharp has been taken up as the
patron theorist of non-violent action around the world. His ideas
about power are regularly presented in nonviolent action training
sessions, his examples of non-violent action are endlessly re-used in
talks and leaflets, and his authority is routinely invoked in support
of non-violence. Arguably, Sharp has a higher profile among
grassroots social activists than any other living political theorist.
(The major influential figures of Gandhi, Mao and Marx are
dead.)

Ironically, while Sharp's analysis
is most applicable to authoritarian regimes which more closely
approximate the ruler-subject picture, his ideas have gained the
greatest following in liberal democracies where the complexity of
power structures limits the relevance of his theory.

In being taken up by activists,
Sharp's ideas are often communicated and applied in a highly
simplified form. Simplification and transformation (distortion) are
inevitable in the translation from theory to practice. This also
applies to structural analysis; one result has been 'vulgar Marxism'.
This is one reason why it is important to examine the core ideas in a
theory rather than be distracted by complex elaborations. The
strength of Sharp's approach is that his core ideas are ideally
suited for fostering non-violent action, whereas the core ideas in
structural approaches are better suited for analysis than
action.

Compared to his enormous currency
'in the field', Sharp has had relatively little influence in policy
or scholarly circles. For most policy makers, who deal in the
nitty-gritty of practical politicking and its assumptions of top-down
decision-making and the ultimate reliance on violence, Sharp's
commitment to non-violence and diffusing power is far too radical and
hence is dismissed as impractical or utopian. Furthermore, training
populations in methods of non-violent action would make the task of
'governing' society - that is, maintaining the reality and legitimacy
of inequalities in power, wealth and status - immensely more
difficult, and would jeopardise the positions of the policy makers
themselves.

The scholarly neglect of Sharp's
work [4] is more complex. A possible (and highly
unflattering) explanation is that his power theory is too simplistic
to attract the attention of political scientists while his studies of
nonviolent action, which can be attacked as based on taking
historical examples out of context in order to prove a point, are not
convincing historical scholarship. Whatever the strength of such
charges in relation to Sharp, shortcomings such as these are rife in
political and historical work. For example, the theory of nuclear
deterrence is based on several untenable assumptions, such as the
rationality and unity of national actors. Yet it is taken extremely
seriously by numerous scholars. Furthermore, nuclear deterrence
theory cannot be claimed to be more concerned with 'real world
politics' than nonviolent action, since the latter is a ubiquitous
component of political struggles throughout the world.

I prefer an explanation that rests
on the content of Sharp's ideas rather than on a prejudicial
evaluation of his 'scholarship'. Arguably, liberal theorists have not
taken up Sharp's approach because they are not interested in
promoting social change from the bottom up, while the major critical
tradition within social science, Marxism, is historically linked to
violent liberation struggles, vanguard political parties and
structural analysis. The major intellectual traditions which are most
in tune with Sharp, anarchism and Gandhian political and economic
analysis, have little following among Western social scientists
.

It might be objected that although
Sharp's approach is superior in terms of mobilizing social action,
its lack of structural insight will lead to the failure of campaigns.
While persuasive as an abstract argument, this objection overlooks
the immediate circumstances associated with at least some organized
nonviolent action. Those who plan non-violent action frequently have
a deep understanding of the local political situation. This
understanding in many cases is exactly what a structural analysis
would look like if applied to the local political scene. Thus the
most talented and experienced activists, even if untutored in the
intricacies of abstract social theory, may incorporate the equivalent
of a structural analysis into their practical activities. In this
context, the shortcomings of Sharp's theory are far less important
than its strengths. (By comparison, most structural approaches offer
little immediate direction for campaigning, and can result in the
familiar 'paralysis of analysis'.)

This ideal situation will not
always apply, and so it is worth asking whether it is useful or
desirable to combine the insights of Sharp's theory and
structural approaches. Starting with Sharp's picture, it is
relatively easy, in principle, to 'add in' social structures. Rather
than assuming a stark ruler-subject dichotomy, a more complex picture
of an array of partially supporting and partially antagonistic forces
can be developed. The activist aim of withdrawing support then poses
the difficult question of which particular intervention will best
mobilize support, empower oppressed groups and lead to lasting
change. From the point of view of activists, it should be possible to
combine Sharp's insistence on the importance of withdrawing consent
with a structural analysis which could help indicate those avenues
where non-violent action would have the most desired
effect.

Starting from a structural
analysis, it is not so obvious what it means to incorporate insights
about consent until it is made clear what is to be done with the
result. If the purpose of theory is 'understanding of society' in
some general scholarly sense, then there is little immediate purpose
in disrupting a coherent structural analysis by adding on some
material which is at cross purposes theoretically. Admittedly,
structural approaches often suffer from a failure to include human
agency, but it is not clear that Sharp's method is the most
successful way to do this from a theoretical point of
view.

On the other hand, if one of the
aims of a structural analysis is to provide insights for social
action, it is first necessary to go beyond a static picture of
society to examine tensions, frictions, contradictions and struggles.
Then it is necessary to conceptualize the role of intellectuals and
social theory in social struggles. For example, what should the
theorists say if their theoretical suggestions for action are
bypassed in favour of some more pressing or popular campaign? In
other words, how does structural analysis link its prescriptions to
the theoretically untidy day-to-day welter of issues, campaigns,
coalitions and counter-strategies by dominant groups?

The difficulty confronting theory
in this middle-ground of providing guidance for campaigns 'on the
ground' is one reason why the task is often forsaken in favour of
producing erudite works which provide deep insight into structures
but almost no guidance about involving oneself and others in social
activism. High level theory also has the 'advantage' (for the
theorist's prestige) that it is unlikely to be 'proven wrong' by the
next turn of events.

The task of linking structural
analysis to direct action is a vitally important one; the point here
is that it is quite difficult partly because structural approaches do
not have obvious and immediate implications for social
action.

Thus, while it is relatively easy
to criticize Sharp's theory of power at an intellectual level, it is
immensely more difficult to propose an alternative theory which is
more suited for effective practical application. Sharp's approach,
through its simplicity and immediate relevance, throws the spotlight
on apparently more sophisticated approaches by suggesting the simple
question, 'What can you do with them?'

NOTES

1. On Gandhi see
Gandhi (1927), numerous articles in the journal Gandhi Marg
and interpretations and developments by Gregg (1966) and
Shridharani (1939).

2. For example,
Koch (1984) claims that Sharp's idea of withdrawing consent
'disregards the fact that. in the process of state-formation, so many
sources of power accumulate and concentrate into the machinery of the
state that the withdrawal of popular support would have little effect
on the existing power of the ruler' (p. 3). This argument
misconceives the process of withdrawing consent as applying only to
those outside the machinery of the state. Sharp would include state
functionaries (including police and the military) among those whose
consent is necessary for the ruler to continue in power.

3. Another way of
analysing the limitations of Sharp's approach is through the contrast
between one-, two- and three-dimensional views of power as described
by Lukes (1974). According to this classification, Sharp's approach,
with its focus on behaviour and decision-making. is one-dimensional.
The two- and three-dimensional views of power, which use the concepts
of non-decision-making and control over the political agenda, bring
in the same considerations as the structural approach as described
here. Within peace research, Geeraerts (1977), among others, has
distinguished between the instrumentalists, which include Sharp, and
the structuralists, such as Galtung. A number of the points made here
about Sharp have been made in general terms of the instrumentalists
by the structuralists.